


In All the Worlds

by penscritch



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, FFVII people reborn in KH, Less Angsty Than it Sounds, Past life, Waiting, hinted background pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 22:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10523703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penscritch/pseuds/penscritch
Summary: Yuffie waits and wonders if Vincent felt like this during his thirty years in a coffin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently Vincent/Yuffie is still one of my #1 OTPs bar none. I got loads of unfinished works and I pop out this new one instead. Go me. *headdesks*

Yuffie doesn’t remember right away. She’d probably be dead if she had – the process of getting born is traumatic on all sides and she knew _she_ almost puked watching that live birth ages ago in sex ed.

  
As it is, Yuffie remembers in fragments.

  
At six, she sees a crimson pennant whipping in the sky and thinks _dark red cloak on a tall sad man_. She doesn’t know why but shrugs it off with another bite of ice cream, convinced it’s her overactive imagination. Obviously she’s been reading too many fairy tales with Tifa, gawd that stuff is going to rot her brain but she just can’t stop.

  
At nine, she beats up a bully with a roll-up kick by stepping up his body and launching herself off his face in a backflip that flips him butt over head into the waterway. Yuffie blinks when she’s done, disconcerted because she sure didn’t learn that from Tifa. Aerith runs up all flowers and amazed gratitude, which quickly runs it all out of her head because Aerith gives the _best_ hugs.

  
Twelve years old and Yuffie realizes she’s never going to be adopted. It’s not something particularly sad for her – all right, she is a bit bummed out that no one realizes how awesome she is – because there are two sets of memories running through her head. One she dubs ‘me-time’ and consists of her current life as an orphanage brat in Radiant Garden. The other one is something so incredible that she’s half-convinced it’s a figment of her imagination still. She has a broken family with an old coot for Pops and crazy friends in a dying world, but it’s all right. They fill up all the empty spaces in her heart in this ‘me-time,’ so much so that she gives up trying to fit in for these sadsack potential parents and just focuses on being her. The Great Ninja Yuffie is perfectly fine as she is.

  
Plus, some of the people from her memories are her friends this time around too. Only Aerith seems to remember though. She raises a secretive finger to her lips when Yuffie tries to bring it up in front of Tifa, taking her aside later to explain that… well, being an Ancient had something to do with it in her case. As for Yuffie’s, she had no idea. Yuffie has a feeling that her family’s dedication to Leviathan wasn’t just for show; the oldest stories said that Leviathan came from a place beyond the moon and sun and stars, some place beyond the planet and living world, a place where only spirits dwelled. Time isn’t a concept familiar to spirits.

  
Perhaps – probably – it’s going to hold true for _him_ as well. He had a Protomateria stuffed inside his chest and was the vessel for _Chaos_. She’s going to shove a shuriken up the you-know-where if he doesn’t remember.

  
Yuffie’s old set of memories aren’t completely back when adolescence hits her with a _wha-pow!_ like that old arcade game with the toy hammer and pop-up bear. But boy does she blush when she remembers more. That vampire is some hot stuff and she’d hit it if he weren’t so mopey all the time, not that doom-and-gloom is a bad look for him… She slaps her cheeks. Come on Yuffsters! Don’t be a prey to your hormones!

  
None of her efforts stop the burning in her cheeks. Tifa mistakenly tries to set her up with a nice boy but she scandalizes him by dumping a pail of dirty water over his head. Aerith shakes her head, not giving judgment either way but with a strange sort of understanding in her eyes.

  
When Radiant Garden falls to the darkness, Yuffie loses… well, not everything. That stupid, tea-drinking old man Cid is still here – obsessed with tea rather than cigarettes but still in love with airship designs; she can’t wait until he meets Shera again – and Tifa and Cloud and Aerith. Aerith was dead in that other set of memories so she’ll count this as a win. Cloud lost his mother to a man he describes as having long silver hair and a scary blade. _Sephiroth_ and _Masamune_ ring in her head and all she can do is warn him helplessly before he moseys out into the worlds to defeat his darkness. Tifa looks after him longingly but only that. She’s not strong enough to go after him yet.

  
Setting up shop with Cid and Aerith in Traverse Town is the closest thing to home she can get. Squeon Call-Me-Leon shows up with belts and fur and angst. She picks on him because he’s ridiculous and needs to loosen up before he cracks into pieces. His lady love shouldn’t have to come home to a zombie. Tifa would have teased her and asked if Yuffie had a crush but she’s already out searching for Cloud. Aerith doesn’t tease her, just watches her with that same patient understanding gaze. A glimmer of something like enlightenment crosses her face but Yuffie’s already turned to argue with Cid.

  
Yuffie is eighteen when Sora swings by the restored Radiant Garden in goth black but a smile as sunny as ever. Her relief is profound; finally there’s someone other than herself who can wear black without angsting like no tomorrow. When Cloud follows at his heels…

  
Well, Yuffie exits stage left. Who can blame her, when she remembers seeing that claw and tattered cape on someone else, someone who was very important to her?

  
Aerith finds her on the rooftop throwing popsicle sticks down onto innocent pedestrians. Mr. Scrooge is madly waddling everywhere because he’s missing a bucket of sea salt ice cream and there are sticks everywhere. He has the evidence but not the culprit.

  
“I wouldn’t have thought you two would become a couple,” Aerith says. It’s not an insult when she says it in that peculiarly Aerith way.

  
Yuffie shrugs nonchalantly, or tries to. “It happened… after. _Way_ after.” After he died, came back like the vampire assassin he was, and saved the world. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so all she does to explain is say, “He got over the angst.”

  
Aerith nods, as though that tidbit contained a multitude of words and folds her hands in her lap. They stay there in silent companionship until Yuffie runs out of sea salt ice cream and sticks to throw.

 

When she comes back, Cloud looks sheepish. He’s taken off the cape and the claw and somehow found an outfit that looks exactly like what he’d taken to wearing after he’d started up his delivery business.

  
He ran a hand through his spikey hair. “Sorry for upsetting you,” he said, bewildered but determined to make amends. “I didn’t think I looked that bad.”

  
Yuffie smiles, a knot in her chest dissolving. “Are you kidding me? You were totally rocking the emo-chic. It’s all the rage, want me to give you some chains or – ooh, I know a guy who does body piercings –“

  
Cloud does a full-body shudder and says “ _No_ ,” so emphatically that they all laugh. When Aerith breaks the news to him that Tifa’s out searching for him, he looks a little thoughtful and sad but hopeful. It’s big improvement over the way he looked when he left, so full of darkness he might as well have been Sephiroth’s twin.

  
It makes her believe in happy endings again.

  
Aerith still mutters something that sounds like ‘ _Zack_ ,’ whenever she has a dream that makes her smile sweet and soft before she wakes up. Yuffie stares a second too long at guns and the color red, sometimes with a wry quirk to her lips that makes Leon terrified she’ll add shooting to her arsenal of deadly ninja skills.

  
She wants to tell him not to worry. That spot’s reserved for someone else, someone with a penchant for broodiness and headshots and unexpected humor. But it’s a secret she holds close to her heart like his name ( _Vincent_ ) so she just climbs onto the roof to stare at the stars of all the worlds and wait for him to come sweeping back into her life.

  
Yuffie shouldn’t have to do all the work, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Some explanations for you all:
> 
> Leviathan: I’m using some FFIV ideas, particularly the stuff featuring Leviathan and Asura as King and Queen of Eidolons. I don’t imagine time is a concept that matters for them, so past memories can be remembered since there is no ‘past’ or ‘present’ for them.
> 
> Zack: HE EXISTS IN KH PRAISE BE TO THE KH OVERLORDS. He shows up in Birth By Sleep as a contestant in the Coliseum. Poor baby can be happy with Aerith in at least one universe now. ;-;
> 
> Vincent: Has yet to show up in KH but I hope he’s hanging around somewhere… It’s unsaid but implied in this fic that Yuffie worked her butt off to get Vincent moving in FFVII so she’s going to make him do the work this time. :D


End file.
